Though there are many worthwhile iPad news-reading apps, Flipboard (free) continues its reign as the best of the best. Recently updated to version 3.0, Flipboard for iPad($445.00 at eBay) now has a more streamlined interface, a daily curated magazine, and a new social media-like reading model that encourages you to follow topics, people, and curated magazines. Rest assured, Flipboard hasn't moved away from the elements that have made it successful; it still deftly aggregates articles, video, podcasts, and social media into an accessible but feature-rich, print-style digital magazine. My one major gripe? Flipboard still lacks dedicated offline reading support.
Here's the Lede
You begin with Flipboard by selecting a topic, or topics, from a grid of 18 options, and tapping the Next icon. This causes Flipboard to quickly compile your digital magazine and display the individual topics (as well as The Daily Edition—more on that later) in a series of panels. If you'd like to kick a panel to the curb, simply hold a square and then tap the X icon when it appears.
Bringing a finger to the red ribbon in the upper-right corner opens a list of additional categories and lets your tinker with options. Note: You should create an account or log in with Facebook credentials if you like sharing or favoriting articles or syncing them across devices.
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What's great about Flipboard is that all your favorite topics come to you—you don't have to actively visit your favorite online destinations. Kicking back with an iPad in hand and scrolling through content from The Associated Press, IGN, Los Angeles Times, and other outlets is a breezy, effortless affair.
Turning Pages
Flipboard displays most articles as clean, minimalist pieces with black text on a white background, a handful of images, and a news outlet's logo. A handful of publishers require you to click through to their sites to read articles in their entirety, which is a bit annoying, but those occurrences are not at all commonplace.
More importantly, Flipboard's navigation is incredibly smooth; I didn't encounter a single hiccup in my time with the app. You can, of course, share articles via email, social media, and other platforms. If you add your Facebook or Twitter accounts to Flipboard, the app transforms links posted in those social media feeds into slick-looking articles. Feedly, a competing iPad news-reading app, lacks such a feature.
After you page through a few articles, Flipboard suggests that you follow related topics. For example, Flipboard nudged me toward numerous gaming-related topics after I read some articles in the World of Warcraft section. Flipboard's suggestions are excellent ways to discover new content. It also suggests magazines (that is, user-curated collections) to follow. If you want to read articles from select news outlets, say The New York Times or The Daily News, you can opt to follow just those publications—a nice touch.
By default, you can't read articles without an Internet connection, but you can save individual pages for offline reading if you download and install Instapaper, Pocket, or Readability. Google Currents, a competing Android news aggregator, lets you save articles to your device without third-party apps.
This Just in
Flipboard 3 introduces The Daily Edition, a curated newsmagazine for people who want a quick update on hot stories. Think of it as a combination of the now-defunct The Daily news-reading app and Buzzfeed. Here's how The Daily Edition works: A new edition is released each day at 7 a.m. local time, but should breaking news occur, stories are added as needed. Each weekday has a particular theme; for example, Thursdays are all things fashion and style. In addition to news, there's some levity in the form of a daily song and a "Parting GIF."
I like Daily Edition a lot, as it gave me a more insightful look at a particular topic. One of Flipboard's drawbacks is that if you select a topic, you'll see very similar news stories as outlets scramble to get traffic with a trending storyline. The Daily Edition doesn't have that problem, because of its curated nature. For example, a cover story on news about politics contained three articles that tackled the subject in different ways, including a story on President Obama's reaction to the Republican Party's domination of the United States' 2014 mid-term elections.
Flipboard for iPad is an excellent newsreader that'll make you ditch the idea of using browser bookmarks and traditional RSS readers. Yes, you still need to download a separate app to save documents for reading at a later time, but Flipboard is the best in its category and worthy of a PCMag Editors' Choice award winner.
The latest Flipboard update makes an already excellent iPad news-reading app even better.
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